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AGAINST_STUPIDITY

                                         September 15, 2004
   
Intellectual fads come and        
go, and along the way they      
often produce changes in         When you come down to it, 
the educational system, but      it just doesn't seem to   
they never seem to do any        matter very much what the 
real good.                       subject of discussion is  
                                 when the students are just
                                 yawning through it to get 
                                 their union cards...      
                             
                            
                              
Once up on a time (mid-1970s?) it was:

  We must bridge the "Two Cultures", it's time    
  for...  Interdisciplinary Distribution Requirements!
 
                              TWOCULT 

Then once upon another time (late 80s, early 90s):
                            
  When I was at Stanford a multicultural
  assault was on the way, against Stanford's
  well-regarded requirement for undergrads to
  do a year's worth of study of "Western           
  Culture".  This got revised into some sort of    
  "World Culture" program, named "Cultures          Acroynym: 
  Ideas and Values".                                "CIV", get
                                                    it?                

      I was down on this change myself:                             
      I figured that while you can                                  
      construct arguments for it that                               
      sound good, the way it would play        "After all, what *is* 
      out is that the the revised               Western Culture? Can 
      program would be less substantive         you understand the  
      without a heavy background in the         West without, say,          
      classics, dreaded Dead White Males        knowing about rock n'        
      or no.                                    roll?"                     
                                                                             
                 But I suspect that the way                                 
                 it *really* played out is                                   
                 you got the kids buying a                                  
                 different set of books         A class in "Western          
                 they're not going to read,     Culture" sounds like     
                 and that's about it.           fun to me, but I'd  
                                                hear undergrads say 
                                                stuff like "I'm off 
                                                to Western Torture".


Then once upon a still later time (the
90s, perhaps on through the Naughts):

   You sometimes hear people claiming that    
   we can save American education with    
   national standardized tests...         
                                 
       Myself, I graduated from a                 
       high school in New York State,             
       which has a bunch of                        TEACHING_THE_TEST
       additional tests kids take in           
       order to earn a diploma from             
       the state Board of Regents.             
       While ace-ing them is no joke,            
       merely passing them really is:          
       they're dumbed down to make             
       sure that nearly any warm body
       can squeak by.                
                                   
          You can't possibly 
          Maintain Standards                    
          with a standardized test.             
                                               
             Standardization is the            
             opposite of intelligence.         
                 
                 

                 
It's all so sad, but 
what can you really do?   
                 
There's no question that 
education is important, 
and no question  
that it needs improvement,
what changes can you possibly        And worse, a funny dated-looking 
try to make that won't turn          band-aid reflecting concerns of 
into another band-aid?               eras gone by.  Paisley psychedelic 
                                     band-aids, pin-striped organization 
                                     man band-aids, sputnik atom-age 
                                     band-aids, multi-cultural band-aids 
                                     with a rainbow of fleshtones... 
                 
                 
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